The Messiah Prophecy Murders: Book II: A Severe Mercy

By Charles LeRoy Janes

If Quentin Tarantino and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were to meet on a street in old St. Petersburg and agree to collaborate on a story, the Messiah Prophecy Murders is the story they would write: Deep in war-torn Poland in September 1939, a Red Army soldier, about to execute a wounded Polish officer, is brought to a trembling halt when he recognizes the officer as a boyhood friend's father, who had been deeply generous to his own father when he was in desperate need of help to feed his impoverished family. With the recollection of the father's acts of kindness, the soldier hesitates, fires a round harmlessly into the ground, and whispers to the officer to lie still so that nearby soldiers who heard the shot will think their comrade did his duty and finished off the enemy officer.

The consequences of that act of mercy then caromed through time and space and the lives of the combatants and their progeny to land in a courtroom in Newport, Rhode Island in a trial for murder in which the Polish officer's son, Piotr Zaborski, has been framed and betrayed by the soldier's son, Nicolay Speshnev, both of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens after having immigrated from Poland in their teens nearly thirty years earlier. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the posh resort community of Newport was convulsed by the slayings of the stunningly beautiful daughters of three of its ultra-wealthy Summer Colony families. The features of the murders and the evidence found at each of the crime scenes, most notably a handwritten prophecy of Christ's Second Coming, strongly suggest that the killer is driven by depraved religious compulsions and obsessions. Suspicion falls heavily on Zaborski who, years earlier while a novice at a nearby Benedictine monastery, was expelled from the monastery for mysterious reasons. Since his expulsion, he has become a fixture on the streets of Newport, known for his often homeless, destitute, and eccentric existence; for his ostentatious and frequent public displays of intense religiosity and aggressive Pro Life advocacy; and for his irrepressible habit of endlessly and seemingly aimlessly roaming the streets of Newport at all hours of the day and night dressed in filthy dumpster clothing embellished by an ever-present, outsized monk's rosary and crucifix draped conspicuously around his neck.

In the heated, nearly hysterical atmosphere of Newport in the weeks after the murders, the unsubstantiated accusations and inchoate suspicions directed at Zaborski harden into the conviction that he is the killer when law enforcement leaks to the media the text of the crime scene prophecies and the reports of forensic experts concluding that the prophecies were written in Zaborski's hand. With public opinion howling for Zaborski's neck and with the summer tourist season fast approaching, the city fathers mount a campaign of their own to pressure law enforcement into arresting Zaborski in the hope that with his arrest, Newport will be able to return to its customary celebratory and pleasure-seeking ways with crowded sun-dappled beaches, packed hotels, and boisterous bars and restaurants. The hope proves illusory, however, as the murder and mayhem continue even after Zaborski's arrest and incarceration pending trial. From his perch as the maitre d' of one of Newport's poshest waterfront restaurants, the psychopathic but Armani-sleek and charismatic Speshnev resumes his bloody siege of Newport which keeps the resort community in the grip of a crippling fear and dread.

Despite the further acts of violence while Zaborski is incarcerated the state relentlessly pursues its indictment against him. Eventually, it is only through the tenacious investigative efforts of Zaborski's pro-bono but celebrated Boston defense counsel Anthony Caro and Caro's local Newport co-counsel and love interest ,Maura Boyle, that the long ago events in Poland are unearthed. That all leads to the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781636924298

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The Messiah Prophecy Murders

Book II: A Severe Mercy

Charles LeRoy Janes

Copyright © 2022 Charles Janes

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-63692-428-1 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63692-429-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Isaiah's Chapter

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Chapter 116

Chapter 117

Chapter 118

Chapter 119

Chapter 120

Chapter 121

Chapter 122

Chapter 123

Chapter 124

Chapter 125

Chapter 126

Chapter 127

Epilogue

About the Author

If the impossible so long yearned for tapped at the window like a robin with a frozen heart who would get up to let it in?

—Czeslaw Milosz

You cannot conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone, the…appalling…strangeness of the mercy of God.

—Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

Chapter 67

The middle of June came and went with no word from Piotr 's sister in Poland. It had been over three weeks since he had written her to ask that she contact his lawyers. When questioned about her failure to respond, Piotr insisted that Krystyna would never fail to fulfill my request. She will call or write. There is no doubt. As Caro sat in his office in Boston, he pondered what he would do if the coming weeks brought only further silence. Time is a demon. October will be here tomorrow, and I'll have no way to tell his story .

Piotr's assurances did nothing to stem his anxiety or his anger that Piotr had raised still another artificial barrier to his lawyers' efforts to defend him: his refusal to disclose the mortgage that Speshnev had on his soul that crushes me in silence and the specifics of the sacred pledge made long ago that compelled him to withhold the answers to the questions that would finally unravel the infuriating enigma of his relationship to a killer.

Rankled by his contemplation of Piotr's continued obstinacy, he walked out of his office to get a cup of coffee and then reversed his steps when Helen told him that Givens was on the phone.

You remember that transvestite in my report, Nikki Jones? said Givens.

Sure.

The guy she's been living with was found dead in a drainage ditch across the bay in Wickford. They found another guy with him, but his face was gone. Both of them were chewed up pretty bad. Nikki saw it on TV and called me about an hour ago all cryin' and hysterical. She said her man—a guy named Billy Dees—was workin' on some deal with a guy named Goat, who works for the New Orleans guy, Darryl Bresson. The plan was to extort money out of Speshnev using a tape from Max's. Nikki said Dees and this guy Goat are errand boys for Max and Bresson. There wasn't any ID on the other guy, but she thinks it's this guy Goat. I called a friend on the force, and he said the same. He said the guy's real name is Winston Gauthier. He's one of the Louisiana boys who work for Bresson. My guy said Dees's truck was towed from Brenton Point yesterday. He said it'd been there for a week. Nikki thinks Dees made a copy of the tape because he didn't trust anybody, but she can't find it. Dees hasn't been at the trailer for a week. Karma got 'em, she said, whatever that means.

The bodies were just found, then?

Early this morning. Some nature walker found them.

You think Jones knows what's on the tape?

Chapter 68

She said she didn't, but she knows. She just doesn't know if she wants to tell me. I'll get it out of her. I told her I want that tape.

You said the bodies were ‘chewed up'?

My guy said they were a meal for something. It wasn't pretty.

Why did Jones call you?

Shit, I've known Nikki Jones forever. Givens chuckled. She was a snitch for me when I was on the force. Whenever she gets in a jam, she calls me. Her mother, Ruth, and I grew up together with Ian in Tonomy Hill. Ask Ian about Ruth and Nate. Ruth used to say, ‘God don't want 'em, but the devil won't take 'em, so I gotta keep 'em.' Even when she was Nate, Nikki was a piece of work."

So she thinks there's a copy of the tape in the trailer?

That's what she said. All I know is that I had to hold the goddamned phone about six inches from my ear because of all the racket goin' on in the background, along with her wailin'. It sounded like she was turnin' the trailer upside down. She kept screamin', ‘That tape's gonna get my sweet ass killed.' Maybe it will. Whatever's on that tape turned a couple of errand boys into snack food.

Can you go to the trailer and look yourself?

I told her I was coming. I'm in Providence, but I'm heading back.

If you need to give her some cash, do it. You've got carte blanche on that—do whatever's necessary. We have to get that tape.

Nikki is always a woman in need. Givens chuckled.

When the call ended, Caro mulled over their conversation. For two bodies to end up in a drainage ditch because of a tape, the tape's contents had to be explosive. If Dees and Gauthier were just errand boys, were their bosses involved as well, or was it a rogue operation to make some extra cash? The former seemed more likely. But if Bresson wanted Speshnev dead, wouldn't he just kill him? Most importantly, what would a tape from Max's be other than something that involved sex and drugs? The most logical extortion plot would involve one of the slain women, most likely McKenzie. Criminal or sordid acts involving her would open Speshnev up to extortion, and the only way to foil the plot would be to kill the errand boys and seize the tape. The bodies were found across the bay in Wickford, but Dees's truck was found abandoned in the parking lot at Brenton Point. If Speshnev had killed them and hauled them across the bay, he wouldn't have used Dees's truck because of the security cameras on the Newport Bridge. Leaving the truck at Brenton Point made sense. He couldn't remember seeing security cameras in the parking lot. The lot was used by hundreds of locals and tourists every week to view the ocean; no vehicle would stand out. And when the weather was bad, the lot was normally empty, with no risk of observant eyes. In either case, it was a good place to park a vehicle and vanish. And there was always the night, the most anonymous time of all. There was wisdom in leaving the truck at Brenton Point but also hubris: Speshnev's house was only a short walk away in a sparsely populated area. Why leave the truck so near to one's residence, within a radius that might prompt questioning by the police? But he could almost hear Speshnev's smirking, dismissive answers: I have no idea whose truck this is, Officer. The photograph doesn't jog a memory. It's a Ford F-150, isn't it? It looks used. There must be millions of them on the road. No, I never go to Brenton Point. I see enough tourists as it is in my restaurant. But leave me your card. If something comes to mind, I'll call you straightaway. Rest assured, I'll keep my eyes peeled for anything suspicious.

The afternoon wore on slowly. Over and over, Caro's thoughts were pulled back to the trailer of Nikki Jones and the missing tape. He tried to tamp down his expectations, but in the long waiting for Givens's phone call, his imagination conjured a dramatic possibility. In the hysterical, chaotic mind of Nikki Jones, perhaps a tape from Max's didn't mean literally a tape of lurid or criminal behavior occurring at Max's but rather a tape that had been kept there for safekeeping. In his excitement, he allowed himself to think the unthinkable: Alone among the three victims, Alexandra St. Fleur's home had a security system that included surveillance cameras, whose footage was stored on the hard drive of a computer. By the time her body was discovered, the computer had disappeared. Was it possible that the hard drive had found its way into the hands of Bresson and he had given it to Max to hold for safekeeping, removing it from his personal possession and the risk it posed but preserving it for use against Speshnev? Learning of the drive, had Dees seized upon the main chance to take advantage of the threat that the video posed to Speshnev and conceived his own extortion plan? If Dees had made a copy of the video to extort Speshnev and then a second copy to protect himself against the unforeseeable, he would have hidden the second copy someplace safe but close, and the trailer was the obvious location. And if Dees didn't want Jones to stumble across the copy, the undercarriage of the trailer would be the perfect hiding place. If he were Dees, that's where he would hide it, wrapped and sealed against the elements. That's where Givens needed to look.

But as he considered the possibility, he realized that the unthinkable was unthinkable: How would Bresson get his hands on the computer in the first instance unless he himself was involved in the killings? And how could the two errand boys ever pursue their own rogue extortion plot? Silvestri's squeamish reference to Bresson's wild pigs answered the latter question: Nobody was going to risk that for extortion money, not even two lowlifes desperate for a big payday. The possibility he imagined made no sense. The most likely scenario was a tape of Speshnev and McKenzie at Max's which was known to Dees, who then partnered with Gauthier to extort Speshnev. And behind them, both had to be Bresson. That's why Gauthier was involved—Bresson's errand boy.

Early that evening, Givens called and related what he had found when he arrived at Nikki's trailer. The trailer and Nikki were in identical states of shambles. Crying hysterically over the loss of her Billy boy and living in terror that my sweet ass is next, she had reduced the trailer's contents to the same chaotic ruin that ruled her mind. Her cat Precious sat in balled-up terror on top of the refrigerator. And the tape's whereabouts remained a mystery. Nikki told Givens that she was leaving pronto for Woonsocket to live with Auntie A. She also said that Billy had disclosed to her that there was a second tape that Goat had taken from Bresson that would cook the Prince's ass well done, but she didn't know what was on it, either. When pressed harder by Givens, she insisted she didn't know shit from Shinola. Finally, pissed off at what he believed was Nikki's feigned ignorance, Givens used some leverage he had on her. In response, she divulged that the night before Billy disappeared, Goat came to the trailer, and they got high on a little grass and started drinkin' the Captain. Then were fightin' nasty over the fact that Billy wanted to shake the Prince down for some heavy dollars, but Goat said, The man ain't given them no permission for nothin' more than the fifty large, so they weren't raisin' the ante even a plug fuckin' nickel. Billy countered that Fifty large was chump change 'cause they had 'em rapin' the baby and choppin' the runaway, but Goat said that he wasn't gonna let Bresson make no pig shit outta him, so shut the fuck up and dance, whatever that shit meant. She swore that was all she knew. Givens asked her for a spare key to the trailer, and she gave him one. Look for the tape all your sweet ass like, she said, but maybe you don't wanna find it—that tape's got some nasty-ass voodoo karma in it.

Givens said that after Nikki left, he scoured the trailer and then went outside to check the undercarriage. Recent rains had left the ground under the trailer a swamp. He said he would come back later with wet gear and do a thorough search, but he'd have to be careful. While Nikki rented the trailer in her own name, Billy lived there, too, and his driver's license bore the address, which meant that the investigation would land at the trailer's doorstep any minute. He couldn't risk being there when it did or being seen by neighbors. Nobody was going to forget him or his buffed-up black Ram truck. He'd have to come back after dark, leave his truck outside the trailer park, and be quick.

What to do with the tape if one were found was another and portentous question. If Dees and Gauthier had been killed because of the tape and a copy of the tape was discovered by Givens, that tape would be material evidence in a homicide investigation. Moreover, if its description by Dees to Jones was accurate that it showed Speshnev rapin' the baby, it would be direct evidence of another crime as well: the rape of a minor, Magdalena. Withholding the tape in the hope that its contents could somehow be used in his own case was a dangerous game to play.

The other mystery was the content of the second tape, the one that Jones had said had been taken from Bresson by his errand boy, Gauthier. Described darkly by Jones as containing video of Speshnev choppin' the runaway, the tape was another macabre enigma. What exactly the video had captured was a disturbing unknown, but like the tape from Max's, it would be material evidence in a criminal investigation. What was known with utter certainty, however, was that the moral night into which Speshnev had fallen was black and bottomless. Not only have I lost the sense of good and evil, but good and evil do not exist and are but a prejudice. I can be free of all prejudices. Nicolay Speshnev had stepped out of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg into twenty-first century Newport. He was straddling the centuries.

As Caro was preparing to leave the office, an employee from the firm's mailroom dropped off a letter that had just been faxed to the firm with an Urgent notation on the cover page. The familiar salutation identified its author:

To the counselors of the quest,

I am beleaguered by my sense that the Oracle's last clue is esteemed poorly by you, a vexing disappointment and perplexing puzzle leaving you dazed and confused. What! Is that all! you exclaim in peevish disgust. Why this is nothing but a copy of a simple sales receipt from Cliff and Jane's little shop on Broadway, and most of it is smudged and indecipherable. Must I repeat myself again! The small portend the large! And you, Mr. Caro, a former marine, should know the truth of that axiom far better than I! Wasn't the American Century itself ushered in by your marines at Belleau Wood in June 1918? What marine fighting hand to hand with the Boche in that wooded cemetery of the ancient regime could have imagined that his stalwart courage and bravery under fire was vaulting his country into the role of an earth-bestriding Colossus! Yet it was! Can you do less in circumstances far less frightful? I think not.

In striving to aid you in wresting poor Piotr from the injustice inflicted by the repressive visibles, I seem only to paralyze you with the obvious! I'm embarrassed to have to send you this Urgent! alert: Even a schoolboy would have surmised the action required by my Second and Silly Riddle!

Yet you, august Counselors of the law, stumble and fall in the face of my clownish clueing! The schoolboy would have been with me now, sitting at the feet of the Oracle, on the lip of receiving the final abracadabra of my riddling. Instead, what do my dumbstruck eyes behold but Piotr's lost and wandering defenders, bemused, befuddled, and bewildered by the Oracle's simple cluein'! You divined the abode of my feathery legend and deduced the identity of Lucifer's double yet now stagger about like a duck struck on the head, your bearings confounded by a mere sliver of paper.

So desirous I am of your victory, yet there can be no silver-plate service here—your triumph must be earned, not given!

I feel as ancient Sisyphus must have felt eternally rolling that stupid rock up a hill only to have it fall back again, driven nearly insane by its pointless purpose. But he deserved his punishment! What have I done to deserve your flummoxed stares? Avast! Listen up! I herewith tender the last of my clownish clueing, my third and final riddle, and yet another double!—the brother of the receipt for a little copying and printing:

Now there's a place in every town that never gathers tears or frowns.

The folks go there to escape their cares and revel in the astonishing wares.

You'll find boxes of nails and buckets and pails, eyelets for sails, and locks that won't fail.

Spools of wire and grills for fire, files and dials and lighting for miles.

Check out the gutters and measure the shutters, and please don't forget the essential box cutter.

Beauty is there for those who care, but necessity, of course, is the standard fare.

Ruefully, however, the owner will acknowledge that for those possessed by thoughts of malice, there's every contrivance for a murderous connivance.

Now if you're intent on ensnaring a monster, here's a little suggestion to provide you some guidance.

With an eye for beauty and singular color, go to the entrance of this all-American temple.

There you'll find in salmon and black, a stunning collage you'll never take back.

But don't delay, for goodness's sake. The clue is ephemeral and transient by nature, bereft of the permanence that permits a postponement.

So race to the shrine at the earliest time, and there you'll find a clue so sublime.

But please don't forget in your giddy delight. There's an eye in the sky that spies every buy!

All at the place of your Helpful Hardware Man!

Ishmael

PS: To vanquish the Evil One, you must concentrate on his fatal flaw: his hubristic deceit that he's invincible. For in his perfect plan, he committed a perfect blunder, which now awaits, with the aid of my clueing, your perfect discovery.

What a danger the invincibles are to themselves! They confuse their earthly eminence with godly infallibility!

PPS: Of all the marvels of terrestrial life, none leaves me quite so speechless as the knowledge that a butterfly's wings in Brazil can fan a breeze with but a flutter that builds into a typhoon that destroys an island in the Pacific. So, too, with the Evil One! A sidelong glance and the clumsy step of a gawky invisible sends him into a rage that becomes his unimaginable undoing! So be the fearless miners of revenge for all the humiliated and wronged. Swing those pickaxes with ungodly might. Smash the rock! So near you are to your El Dorado!

After reading the letter, Caro faxed it to Maura's office and then called her to let her know it was sent. She drove to her office and read the letter, then called him back. Their conversation ended with agreement to meet at the Ace Hardware store just off Bellevue Avenue at eight o'clock the next morning.

As he crossed Boston Common on his way home, Caro's cell phone rang with Givens's number displayed. Givens told him that he had searched the trailer and its undercarriage but failed to find the tape. At the bottom of a tool kit in Dees's closet, however, he had found a Bank of Newport envelope containing a safe deposit box key and a rental agreement. The agreement was signed by Dees only two weeks earlier, on June 5, and involved a small safe deposit box at the bank's Washington Square location. With Dees dead, either his heirs at law or the executor and heirs under his will would eventually have access to the box, but that would require a court order. His death was also a murder, however, which meant the police could gain access as well and would undoubtedly obtain a search warrant if they knew of the box's existence. He would have to be careful. By taking the key, would he be obstructing a murder investigation? Unlike the tape, the existence of the safe deposit box was a fact, and the key to its contents had now been removed by Givens from the location where it would be found in the normal course of a search of the victim's residence. Givens had also taken the rental agreement, which would have alerted the police to the purpose of the key and the location of the safe deposit box. Although Givens had been given permission by Jones to enter the trailer, and therefore wasn't a trespasser when he found the key, she wasn't the owner of the box and hadn't given him permission to remove anything from the trailer, except for the missing tape. He asked Givens to call her and obtain her additional permission to take anything from the trailer that might indicate the tape's whereabouts and to question her about Billy's next of kin and whether, improbably, he had executed a will.

Minutes later, he entered his home on Beacon Hill. The morning could not come soon enough.

Chapter 69

The Ace Hardware store in Newport is located on Casino Terrace, a driveway-size, dead-end lane immediately off Bellevue Avenue near the Newport Casino, home of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Flanking the entrance to the store when Caro arrived were two enormous black clay pots filled with salmon-colored geraniums. An employee was bustling about setting up the exterior displays for the day ahead. When the employee went inside, Caro parted the flowers inside the pots but discovered nothing and then crouched down and leaned into one of the pots, using his shoulder to tilt the pot and peek underneath. Again, he saw nothing. He moved around the pot and repeated his maneuver on the other side, this time observing a portion of a plastic baggie with a piece of paper inside, but the height and weight of the pot prevented him from reaching the baggie or kicking it free. He lowered the pot and waited for Maura to arrive.

Minutes later, her convertible turned off Bellevue Avenue into the lane. With Maura crouching next to him, he tilted the pot again using both arms while she grabbed the baggie. Inside was another sliver of paper, a sales receipt from Ace Hardware for $16.88, identifying three purchased items: one box of four-inch nails, one spool of galvanized steel wire, and one Stanley utility knife. The items were purchased with cash on December 12, 2001, at 9:43 a.m. Had Ishmael led them to the purchase of the actual weapons and accessories of murder? Purchased singly, the items were unremarkable; purchased collectively, however, the transaction was incriminating. The CJ's Graphics & Design sales receipt was printed on the same day, only an hour later, at 10:47 a.m. Given the common date and proximity of times of the two transactions, logic compelled the conclusion that the customer of each was the same.

But was the customer Speshnev? And how had Ishmael come to possess both receipts? Further, why would he invest them with importance so far in advance of the slayings? The stores sold products and services that were the very definition of the prosaic. Only the killer himself would know their true importance before the murders. But why would even he retain them, except as sick mementoes of the killings to come? The fleeting thought occurred that Speshnev was Ishmael and the clues but part of the game he was playing, a joker toying with his quarry. But could Speshnev's voice mutate so facilely? Ishmael's writing style was playful and boasting, filled with self-conscious conceit; it was a world away from the imperious condescension and practiced scorn that soaked Speshnev's voice. He rejected the possibility. But who was the self-described Oracle of Newport?

Inside Ace Hardware, hanging from the ceiling above the cash register, was a security camera—the eye in the sky that never misses a buy. They walked around the store and saw five other cameras as well, then spoke briefly with an employee about the cameras, who quickly became suspicious and referred them to the manager. When they approached the manager and identified themselves, he immediately radiated hostility and informed them that absent a judge telling me I had to do it, he wouldn't discuss the security system with them. With that, he walked away.

When they left Ace Hardware, they went next door to Katrina's Bakery for coffee and sat down on the outdoor patio. Minutes later, Givens arrived to join them. They related what had happened at the hardware store; then Givens told them of his conversation with Cliff Downey, the owner with his wife Jane, of CJ's. Givens had arrived at the shop when it opened and inquired of Downey whether he remembered anything out of the ordinary occurring the previous December. Downey chuckled. December? I can't remember what I had for dinner last night. Seeing a security camera above the cash register, Givens asked whether the surveillance footage from December was still available. Downey chuckled again. Gone with the wind.

When Givens finished his account, he went on to explain that most of the local businesses still had analog-based VCR surveillance technology in their stores and that few would keep the footage more than thirty days because of the expense and burden of storing the tapes. Instead of adding interminably to a library of tapes, they would use the same or a small number of tapes over and over, simply playing over the prior footage, thereby erasing the recording. Even owners of stores with the newer digital technology, which stored the video on the hard drive of a computer rather than on the cumbersome tapes, would seldom retain the footage beyond sixty days. Similar storage burdens and the expense of buying additional hard disks to increase the system's storage capacity thwarted a longer retention period. The discussion surrounding retention periods was an important one: If they filed a motion with the court to obtain the issuance of a subpoena requiring Ace Hardware to produce the video footage of December 12, that filing assumed that the footage still existed. If it was gone with the wind, however, the motion would not only be futile but also harmful. No matter how obscure the request for the subpoena might appear, the fact that it had been requested at all would rouse the state to ponder its purpose and take investigative action.

Their conversation then turned to the significance of the date, December 12. The only event of note occurring in December was Piotr's admission to Newport Hospital following his argument with Speshnev at the Black Pelican and the onset of a seizure. Caro called Helen and asked her to check the case chronology for Piotr's admission and discharge dates. When she called back, she reported that his admission had occurred at 1:55 p.m. on December 11 and his discharge the following afternoon at 2:19. Speshnev had been with him in the emergency room—according to Teri Davis, the emergency room nurse—and had left the hospital with Piotr's overcoat. Why? To have it dry-cleaned as a Christmas gift? That was laughable. But what if Piotr's apartment keys were in the overcoat? Speshnev could have had the keys copied that afternoon or the following morning before Piotr was discharged. From that point forward, he would have had unencumbered access to the apartment. If Speshnev had formed an intent to kill the women by then and formulated a plan to frame Piotr for the murders, Piotr's seizure would have been pure serendipity. Alternatively, the seizure at the Black Pelican and the discovery of the keys at the hospital could have transformed Speshnev's hatred of the women and vague, indefinite thoughts of revenge into a specific plan of murder. Was it even beyond his nature to provoke Piotr into an emotional state so severe that a seizure was likely, thus providing him with his opportunity? Could they have been arguing over the death of Magdalena Vasquez? Whatever had transpired between them, the confluence of events on December 11–12 pointed to a deliberate linkage, not fortuity.

Ishmael's identity and his possession of the sales receipts remained a mystery that had to be solved. Behind the receipts was a story and in that story the key to Piotr's acquittal might be found. In his latest letter, Ishmael had proclaimed that the killer's unimaginable undoing was set in motion by the sidelong glance and clumsy step of a gawky invisible. If the gawky invisible was Ishmael and the receipts held the key to Speshnev's undoing, had Speshnev and Ishmael somehow encountered each other on December 12, thereby leading to the perfect blunder? But the rebuke to Caro's logic instantly returned: the receipts were only the evidence of two entirely unremarkable business transactions possessing significance to no one other than the killer. The heavily redacted receipt from CJ's was the most obscure. What had happened at the store at 10:47 that was of such galvanizing importance to the Oracle? Was that the moment at which the paths of the gawky invisible and Speshnev had crossed?

When they left Katrina's, the lawyers waited outside Ace Hardware while Givens went in to look at the security cameras. Several minutes later, he returned and informed them that the cameras looked like newer technology that would be used in a digital-based surveillance system that would store the security video on a computer's hard drive rather than on videocassettes. He guessed that any video from December would, nonetheless, have vanished months earlier. But let me make a call, he said. I got someone to talk to.

The three then separated, the lawyers to prepare a preliminary draft of the motion and Givens to contact his unidentified source. They agreed to talk that afternoon. Givens also said he would continue his efforts to reach Nikki Jones to wrest from her what information she had about the purpose of the safe deposit box rental, as well as her knowledge of Dees's next of kin and the unlikely possibility that he had executed a will.

Several hours later, Givens called to relate the substance of a conversation he had had with Jones, who was now living with her aunt in Woonsocket. According to Jones, Billy's mother, LuAnn, was a nasty old roadhouse bitch who lived in Skowhegan, Maine, an old mill town on the Kennebac River. The father, Smoky, had been dead since the Civil War, an older brother Dink was in Maine state prison, and a younger sister Dolly had whored with her mother till she went lost in the woods somewhere. Jones summed it up to Givens this way: All in all, it wasn't no promisin' family tree that Billy fell out of. There was nuts and sluts and not much else. When Givens asked her whether Billy had a will, she responded jeeringly, If you ain't got a pot to piss in, you ain't got to worry about nobody wantin' to inherit your piss. She cackled again when questioned about the safe deposit box: Shit, what's he gonna keep in there—a bottle of the Captain for when hard times come? Smoky and that skank LuAnn shoulda named that boy Hard Times. The Captain be needed 24-7. Givens said a straightforward call to 411 didn't yield a result for any Dees in Skowhegan, but he would chase them down through databases. Regarding his Ace Hardware source, he said he hadn't reached him yet but expected to within a day or two. The source and his brother had ridden Harleys with Givens for years. The source's brother said Kenny was off that week and was riding in Vermont but was expected back the following afternoon.

After the call with Givens, Tony and Maura finalized the motion. Although the motion would be a routine filing, the description of the surveillance video that was being sought and the reason for seeking it had to be adequate to persuade the court to issue the subpoena but vague enough to prevent the state from discovering the true object of the subpoena's purpose. With the filing of the motion, however, they would be giving the state notice of their theory of the case: The video was essential to the defense because it would provide critical evidence necessary to identify the true killer and was essential to establishing that the allegedly incriminating evidence found at the crime scenes and in the defendant's apartment had been staged to frame the defendant for the murders. No mention would be made, however, of the specific purchase that was the true object of the motion or of Speshnev. The motion would seek the court's authorization to issue a subpoena requiring the production of all surveillance tapes covering not only the entire sales day of December 12 but, to further obfuscate the transaction of interest, of the three days on either side of the twelfth as well, or a total of seven days. Such a request would be viewed by the court as neither overly broad in scope nor as unduly burdensome to the business. For the state's prosecutors, the request would induce head-scratching unease but would be insufficiently specific to inform them of what lay behind the filing of the motion. Manion and her staff would be alerted to the defense's general theory of the case, but they would be in the dark as to its single-minded focus on Speshnev.

When the final version of the motion had been completed, they discussed the wisdom of its filing. Until Givens had spoken with his source and obtained reliable information indicating that the surveillance video had survived erasure, the decision to file the motion would remain in limbo. In the absence of such information, the motion would not be filed. Gone with the wind, Cliff Downey had said about his shop's December surveillance video. So, too, they feared with the video from Ace Hardware.

Maura then raised their failure to include in the motion a request for the surveillance video of Newport Hospital's emergency room on December 11 or of Piotr's discharge the following day. The footage from the hospital, however, would, if it still existed, reveal Speshnev's presence alongside Piotr both at the time of his admission and upon his discharge, and it would narrow the focus of interest to only two days. An insightful detective reviewing the video might conclude that Speshnev was the subject of the defense's interest, with the result that the surveillance footage from Ace Hardware would be examined with a laserlike focus on him. The concealment of Speshnev's importance for as long as possible was crucial. While the image of Speshnev holding Piotr's overcoat as he left the emergency room would be extremely useful at trial, it wasn't indispensable: the emergency room nurse knew Speshnev and remembered the scene vividly. After a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of expanding the motion to cover the hospital's surveillance video, they decided against it.

A thought whose ethical implications troubled Caro fought with his instinct to further confuse and distract the state. The motion they had drafted was a prosaic one on its face, but its filing would mark a complete transformation in the way the state viewed the case. The defense would be announcing its intent to raise a fact-based defense founded upon the framing of Piotr by another, declaring with near finality that they had rejected any recourse to an insanity defense or a challenge to his competency to stand trial. While the motion would be met initially by the state's scoffing dismissal, the scorn would soon turn to a full-blown retracement of the state's investigation. Detectives would descend upon the hardware store to question its employees and examine the store's business records. Adding other hardware stores to the motion's reach would dramatically increase the confusion and burden to the state, but there was no evidence linking any other business to the defense's theory of the case. Still, certain weapons and accessories of the crimes had not been accounted for and theoretically may have been purchased by Speshnev at other nearby hardware stores: a hammer, hospital booties to eliminate the risk of leaving shoe or boot prints at the crime scenes, latex gloves to avoid fingerprints, and the duplication of Piotr's apartment keys. None of these were accounted for by the receipts Ishmael had provided. Thus, a plausible argument could be made to justify the expansion of the motion to include other local hardware stores. Two immediately came to mind: Rocky's Ace Hardware and Beach Hardware, both in Middletown. Their addition would also suggest that the defense was unsure of itself and flailing about in its investigative efforts, which would diminish the state's focus on the Newport Ace Hardware store and, perhaps, even the seriousness with which it treated the motion generally. The motion was amended to add the Middletown stores, and with their addition, the state's investigative burden would be tripled from seven days of transactions to be examined at one hardware store to twenty-one days at three stores.

In the end, however, absent great good luck, the motion was unlikely to be filed because the surveillance video was almost certainly erased. The only alternative would be to file a motion for the actual sales records themselves, but that route was foreordained to failure because the purchase of interest had been a cash transaction with no ability to trace the customer. What sales clerk would remember such pedestrian purchases or the identity of the customer more than six months after the transaction?

Nevertheless, he felt strangely hopeful that something would break. The pieces of the puzzle were a jumbled accumulation of disparate facts, suggestions, intimations, and inferences; but their number was growing. With the thought, Father Kaminski's promise made weeks earlier welled up to strengthen the hope: You shall find Piotr's innocence in the formless mass of facts that infuriate, confuse, and evade you.

And he was sure the state's prosecutors had made a potentially grievous error: They had never asked themselves whether, in a world in which the elements of success in any endeavor are nearly always assembled only with the utmost human exertion, one should ever trust as gold a windfall of such bountiful evidence as the state now possessed. For the defense, a somnolent staff of prosecutors wedded to their error was its own form of gold, one which he hoped the state would continue to covet

Chapter 70

The failure to communicate with Piotr's sister by the end of June created a concern that something was seriously amiss. Either Piotr's letter hadn't reached her, or she was away or living elsewhere now, if there wasn't a graver explanation for her silence. Piotr hadn't received correspondence from her since his birthday in February. He wrote her back later that month but, as of the date of his arrest, had received no further correspondence from her. He reiterated that it was unthinkable that she would not respond to his request for help if it was received. He said that because he had not had a phone of his own since moving to Newport, he had never asked Krystyna for her phone number. They had always communicated by writing. Years ago, however, he had written her and provided her with Father Kaminski's phone number at St. Joseph's in the event of an emergency; in turn, he said, he believed that she had given the priest her number in Warsaw. When Caro spoke with Father Kaminski, he confirmed that he had received the Warsaw phone number but had only spoken with Krystyna once, when she called to inform Piotr of their mother's final illness in 1997. He was unaware until very recently that Krystyna had returned to live at the farm in Komarowka.

In a subsequent conversation, Piotr told Caro that his mother had died of breast cancer and wondered whether his sister might not have suffered from it as well, but never told him. Because she had lived nearly her entire adult life in Warsaw, she would almost certainly have had a personal doctor in Warsaw who would have knowledge of her medical history. A telephone number was found for a Krystyna Sobieski in Komarowka, but when the number was called, the phone rang endlessly without anyone picking up. An employee in the mailroom of Caro's firm who was a Polish immigrant, and who had earlier been enlisted to help with phone calls to Poland, was asked to come to Caro's office twice a day to call the Komarowka number, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Each time, however, he met with failure. Given the time zone differences between Boston and eastern Poland, the calls would have been received in Poland between late afternoon and midnight. Simultaneously, a list of Warsaw hospitals was compiled, and calls were made to each to discover whether Krystyna was a patient. The response of each was negative, except for one, but the Krystyna Sobieski was an infant patient. Because Krystyna had been a chemistry professor at the University of Warsaw, the university was called as well; but the person in the chemistry department who was queried would only confirm that her mailing address was in Komarowka and that she had attended a conference at the university in October 2001.

Krystyna's failure to respond to her brother's letter was a mystery in desperate need of a solution. The October 15 trial date would soon begin to impose its own unrelenting regimen. As trial approached, Caro could not be agonizing over her whereabouts. The centrality of her role at trial was obvious: according to Piotr, she possessed the answers to the enigma of the man you know as Nicolay Speshnev. She had to be found. In his frustration, he called Father Kaminski and vented with him again the concerns which still infuriated him: Piotr's lack of sense of urgency, his remoteness from the needs of the case, the belief that God's will would be done without the intervention of human effort, and his indifference to his own personal fate. Piotr's story had provided a clear and deep understanding of the traumatic events which had forged his life, but the apocalyptic conclusions he had drawn from them had led him to a fatalism that was far removed from the exigencies of a murder trial. Most obstructive was his belief that he was now freed from any concern for his personal fate because the Messiah Prophecy, his God-inspired prophecy, had now been revealed to the world. The lifelong craving for a sacred purpose had finally been fulfilled by investing his writing, and himself, with transcendent significance. To a trial lawyer in need of a deeply engaged client, however, it was all a delusion that acted not only as a stumbling block to his efforts but as a boulder walling off success.

The priest listened sympathetically to the critique but was as unyielding in his defense of Piotr's beliefs as Caro was logical in his complaints. There was a collision of beliefs in their conflict, said Father Kaminski, and it would not be resolved by Piotr surrendering his. Despite your concerns and frustrations, be confident, he said. God will help you find a way. He will not desert Piotr. Caro invoked his now repetitive reply: A trial lawyer does not subsist on faith, Father. He subsists on facts. The priest's curt response: I am not a trial lawyer.

When the conversation was over, Caro removed from his desk a copy of a photograph of the Sobieski cottage in Komarowka which Piotr's mother had taken, the original of which had been in Piotr's apartment when its contents were seized by the police. The copy he held in his hands had been produced by the state. The photograph captured not only the cottage but the surrounding property as well. The cottage appeared to have a thatched roof and an exterior made from rough-hewn planks; two sets of shutters bracketed the front windows. It was set back from the road and had a large garden in front of it, beside which was a horse-drawn wagon that now served as the repository of mounds of flowers. Beyond the cottage was a barn, and beyond the barn were fields that stretched to the horizon. Stands of pine trees and clumps of birches ran along the fields to serve as borders. It was a scene out of a National Geographic magazine.

For several minutes, he gazed at the photograph and then dropped the photograph on his desk and reviewed his scheduling calendar. A minute later, he walked out to speak with Helen. He gave her his intended travel schedule and asked her to book the flights: a departure from Boston to Warsaw on Monday, July 8, and a return from Warsaw on Saturday the thirteenth; four work days bracketed by two travel days. He would find Piotr's sister himself and unlock the secrets of his client's past. In making the decision, he experienced a surge of energy, as if a great confusion had been dispelled.

As he was leaving his office to attend a firm meeting, Caro stopped in his tracks and went back to his desk and called Father Kaminski. He had decided to go to Poland to find Krystyna himself, he told the priest, but was doing so without being able to speak or understand a word of Polish. In the eastern borderlands of Poland, who would speak or understand a word of English? Would the priest come with him if his travel companion paid his expenses? It was only six days, Monday to Saturday; he wouldn't miss a single Sunday mass, and his fluency in Polish might well spell the difference between success and failure. The phone line was silent for only a moment; then Father Kaminski said, Of course I will. I'll do anything to help Piotr.

Chapter 71

Speshnev's BMW pulled into the driveway of his house deep in the night on the morning of July 4. The holiday weekend had begun early owing to the calendar; the entire week had turned into a series of late-night parties. When he turned off the ignition, he slumped in exhaustion. His mood and thoughts were foul. He was tired of working eighteen-hour days and being on call 24-7 to satisfy the last-minute demands of the Bellevue dandies and their whining wives. Seth better get in early to clean the place up or else. I'm tired of doing everything and checking every nimrod with a fucking chef's hat. What a bunch of whining bitches. Bitches on Bellevue, bitches in my kitchen, whining bitches everywhere. Then it struck him—Bull wasn't there! Bull was always there waiting for him, sitting on his haunches like a trooper no matter the hour or weather. Where is he! He reached under the seat for his Glock. A floodlight perched just below the roof illuminated the driveway and nearby lawn. He slipped out and crouched next to the vehicle, shielded from the glare of the floodlight and listening to the night. His eyes searched the darkness for shapes and movement. A moment later, he scampered to the side of the house and slowly crept toward the rear. He scanned the lawn and tree line a final time and then peeked around the corner to see a motionless mass crumpled on the patio. Bull! He ran to the pit bull, its head eviscerated by a shotgun blast. You fucker, Bresson! You bastard! Rage exploded in his brain as he looked helplessly at the dead animal. You bastard! he screamed to the night. His eyes swept the area again and then fell to Bull. He stared at the hideous carnage beneath him. You'll pay for this, you Cajun fucking dog! You'll fucking pay! He set his pistol down to raise Bull's body slightly to unleash the clip from his neck collar. He had to move Bull inside, or the raccoons and coyotes would feast on him. He gripped Bull's bloody collar and lifted… Blinding light! A deafening concussive blast hurtles him backward. Excruciating pain electrocutes him. Unconsciousness.

Patrolman Marlon Stickley turned off Ocean Drive to drive back to the city on Brenton Road. In the distance, he saw the night erupt in light. Fourth of fucking July! he cursed as he floored the accelerator

Chapter 72

Caro had just returned to his office from an early morning meeting when Helen informed him that Maura was on the line.

You're never going to believe this, Tony! Maura nearly shouted at him. Somebody tried to kill Speshnev! It's all over the news down here.

What! Speshnev! he exclaimed, incredulous.

They think somebody killed his pit bull, then wired the dog's body with a bomb, and when Speshnev came home from work and saw the dog, he must have tried to move it, and the bomb went off. He's at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence. He's in critical condition.

Lightning from a just God. I'll call Frank—

I've already talked to him. Miriam called me just before I left for work. She was watching the morning news when they had a ‘breaking news' story. Frank called a friend on the force to find out what the police knew. The friend said a patrol car had just come off the Drive and actually saw the blast, so instead of bleeding to death on the lawn, the EMTs were there in minutes. Frank said the pit bull saved his life because it was so massive it absorbed most of the blast. Any other dog and the EMTs said it wouldn't have made a difference how soon they got there.

That's the last guy I want to see get lucky, but maybe we're the lucky ones—we need him for our own purposes.

I don't know how lucky he is, Tony. He's in the burn center at the hospital and in bad shape.

Suffer but live, Nicolay. We need you to testify. I've got to go to a deposition now, but I'll call you as soon as I get out. This is unbelievable news, Maura. It's got to be about Dees and Gauthier and the tapes. Nobody dies from bombs in Newport. Call Frank and ask him about the Ace Hardware source and the mother in Maine—LuAnn Dees. We've got to find out about the surveillance video and get our hands on the extortion tapes.

Throughout the deposition that morning, Caro fidgeted. His mind was fixed on the events in Newport: Dees and Gauthier were killed three weeks ago, their bodies found less than two weeks ago; and now Speshnev, the probable killer of both, was lying on death's door, the victim of an assassination attempt, whose author had to be Bresson. According to Nikki Jones, Dees's tape of Speshnev rapin' the baby was from Max's, but Givens and Silvestri had both said that Max's and Max himself were owned by Bresson and the second tape, according to Jones as well, was Bresson's. If Dees and Gauthier were killed by Speshnev, and if Max was owned by Bresson, then Bresson had to be the author of the bombing.

The only other possibility—that the killings and bombing had been triggered by the failed rogue operation of two errand boys—seemed more and more unlikely: If Dees and Gauthier had betrayed Bresson by secretly using the tapes to extort Speshnev, why would Bresson have taken out his fury on Speshnev? His competitor for McKenzie's affections saved him the effort of having to dispatch the errand boys himself. Betraying the boss for a payday that would otherwise be beyond their reach and putting the boss himself at risk justified the most exacting revenge against the errand boys. Max would never have acted on his own, either. Ultimately, Bresson owned the tapes, the errand boys, and Max. He had to be behind the extortion plot, so the killing of Dees and Gauthier must have been seen by him as a direct challenge to him personally. If Bresson was the sociopath described by Silvestri and Givens, he would have struck back immediately. But why would he authorize an extortion plot against Speshnev in the first place, and why for such a modest amount of money? The only apparent motive was a dispute involving McKenzie, but why wait for a failed extortion plot to kill him? The pieces didn't fit; there had to be more.

One conclusion that required no further analysis was that the contents of the tapes were lethal. Two bodies and a third in a hospital's burn unit were the evidence of the mayhem they had wrought. Nikki Jones was right to be terrified if Bresson thought she possessed a copy. Where were the original tapes now, though? Speshnev would have taken them from Dees and Gauthier, and Bresson would have taken them from Speshnev if his assassin had found them after killing the pit bull. But what if he hadn't found them, or what if, more likely, Speshnev had been extorted using only copies as the bait? What difference did it make, though? Original or copy, the tapes were nuclear. The police investigating the crime scene would turn Speshnev's house upside down in their search for evidence, so if Bresson's assassin had failed to find the tapes in his search, the police might well find them in theirs. But why would Speshnev keep the tapes rather than destroy them? Only an unfathomably deep moral sickness would explain their survival. Would he really watch the tapes as a source of macabre entertainment? Or, perhaps, it was an extraordinarily cunning mind that would explain their survival: In the event Bresson responded to the killings by killing Speshnev, Speshnev in death might have the last laugh on Bresson. The tapes would ultimately be linked to Bresson and a detailed explanatory letter left by Speshnev would fill in the blanks. Speshnev would be far more concerned with damning Bresson in life than he would be in damning himself in death. In his bloodlust and haste to kill Speshnev, Bresson may have committed his own perfect blunder: Possession of the tapes was not assured, and in the hands of the police, they were a mortal threat to him.

As Caro walked back to his office after the deposition, he pondered not only the tapes that had cost Dees and Gauthier their lives but also the security footage from Ace Hardware. The case was collapsing into celluloid. In a courtroom, words were nothing compared with the visceral power of images. As the doors of the elevator in his office building closed and he began the swift ascent to his office, Caro felt the ascent of hope as well. While the state had its celluloid images of the crime scene horrors and of Piotr's hellish apartment, the defense now had the hope of its own celluloid indictment: a video of Speshnev purchasing the tools and accessories of murder and of tapes containing the vile images of a monster raping a schoolgirl and killing a runaway. The existence of the former may well be in doubt, and the legal relevance and admissibility of the latter were decided long shots, but the mere thought of Speshnev's baleful figure at the center of each filled the heart with hate, and in hatred as in hope, there is great energy. He wanted nothing more than to supercharge the energy of his hatred with that of a great hope

Chapter 73

The state's prosecutors and lead detectives convened around the large conference table in what now served as their war room. The precipitating cause of the all-hands meeting was the receipt that morning of the defense's motion requesting the issuance of subpoenas to compel the production of surveillance tapes from four businesses: two Ace Hardware stores—one in Newport and one in Middletown; a second hardware store in Middletown—Beach Hardware; and a medical supply store in North Providence—Alpha Surgical. The motion had jolted the team out of its breezy self-confidence. The game had changed, and the expressions on their faces signaled the change.

Everyone should have received the motion that Caro filed to obtain the surveillance video at the four stores, began Stefanie Manion. The obvious questions are, why is he doing this, and what is he after? Is he blowing smoke? Is it a fishing expedition, or does he have something? He's focusing on a narrow time frame in December of last year, so he's got something very specific in mind. Kyle, do you have the case chronology with you?

I do.

What do you have for December?

There are a bunch of entries from Zaborski's last journal and notebook, replied Finnegan, scanning a page in a three-ring binder, "but most are concentrated between Christmas and New Year's. McKenzie got a traffic ticket for running a red light at Bellevue and Memorial on the nineteenth, and Zaborski had a seizure at the Black Pelican on the eleventh. He was taken